EDITORIALCity needs to lay out school overcrowding options, now“Are they going to start wishing kids into the ether?” That’s what one frustrated father asked us about the city’s lack of urgency dealing with the Downtown school overcrowding problem. We share the frustration, as do many others in Lower Manhattan.

Weekend run to remember Some Marines in the city for Fleet Week arrived in Rockefeller Park by ferry last Friday then ran with some of New York’s Bravest to the World Trade Center site at the start of Memorial Day weekend.

Downtown Express photo by Milo Hess

Birthday bridge gets the works The Brooklyn Bridge celebrated its 125th birthday with a spectacular fireworks display last Thursday, followed by a weekend filled with activities.

Dancing on waterThis year’s River to River Festival opened inland Wednesday outside the New York Stock Exchange with the premier of “Under the Buttonwood Tree,” a reference to the Big Board’s roots. Before the exchange had a home, stocks were traded under a buttonwood tree on Wall St. starting in 1792. The Buglisi Dance Theatre’s lunchtime performance drew crowds of workers and tourists. The summer-long festival features hundreds of free performances all over Lower Manhattan.

Governors Isle opens this weekendOn Saturday May 31st Governors Island  a park created out of a vacant military base in New York Harbor  will open for its 2008 season with a weekend of festivities.

Noho district extension protects 3 more blocksBy Albert Amateau
The Landmarks Preservation Comm-ission has unanimously approved the Noho Historic District Extension, adding 56 new buildings to the Noho and Noho East Historic Districts, which were approved, respectively, in 2000 and 2003.

NEWS

Restoring Chinatown apartments while keeping the rents low By Josh Rogers
Victor Duran snapped pictures on Hester St. last week outside his family’s next home. He enjoyed the political speeches and didn’t seem to be in a particular hurry to see his new and more affordable two-bedroom apartment for the first time.

Downtown schools face city’s budget axeBy Julie Shapiro
The city is cutting education funding by $99 million this year, with high-performing schools taking the hardest hit. The city blames the state for the shortfall, because much of the state funding is restricted to troubled schools.

Success on L.E.S.: From bodegas to Wholesome FoodsBy Ann Binlot
When Orlando Rodriguez, 34, was growing up on Suffolk St. on the Lower East Side, the neighborhood was a stark contrast to today’s scene of luxury high-rise apartment buildings and upscale hotels that are fast filling the landscape. Drugs and crime proliferated on the streets.

From magic portals to enchanting mindscapesBy Debra Jenks
What’s black, white and wistfully grey all over? No, it’s not the news. It’s a Wesen (pronounced VAYZ-in) on an existential expedition through Julia Oschatz’s paintings and the lone star of her videos. The Wesenthe German word for ‘being’is a featureless and genderless rabbit-like creature with big feet, and a surrogate for the artist. Eyeless, and having no mouth, it can’t see where it’s going, or explain its presence.

His Mother’s SonBy Gary M. Kramer
Tom Kalin burst onto the film scene back in 1992 with the New Queer Cinema classic “Swoon,” about homosexual “thrill-killers” Leopold and Loeb.

You’re invited to a wonderful ‘Catered Affair’By Scott Harrah
On the surface, Harvey Fierstein’s stage adaptation of the 1956 MGM film “The Catered Affair,” which originally starred Bette Davis and Debbie Reynolds, does not lend itself to what we normally expect of Broadway musicals. Sure, there’s music and singing, but no flashy costumes or complex choreography with a stage full of dancers and singers.

A quintessential 1960s Greenwich Village romanceBy David Chiu
Among the denizens of Bob Dylan fans, Suze Rotolo gained fame in the 1960s for being his girlfriend. She offers an account of their quintessential Greenwich Village romance in her newly published memoir, “A Freewheelin’ Time,” which drew its name from Dylan’s second album, “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan,” cover of which shows the lovers walking through in the middle of a Downtown street in 1963.